PRESSURE WAVE 2018

Rashid Al Khalifa’s ‘Pressure Wave’ uses painted steel to create something between sculpture and architecture. The colours are restrained, mostly blues and pinks, with accents of green, and a rigorous grid gives the whole piece its structure. Looking at it, you get a real sense of the work involved in its making. Each steel rod carefully welded to the next, a physical, laboured process. You could compare it to drawing with steel. The grid feels very contemporary, a modern affectation, but it also has echoes of the past, of weaving, textiles, and the grid paintings of Agnes Martin. There’s something hypnotic and mesmerizing about the regular, repeating structure. Your eyes almost water trying to focus through the layers of the piece, like the eye is a lens trying to find focus, and you can never quite get there! It reminds me of the work of Fred Sandback, but where he used yarn to define space, here it’s steel, a much more assertive and solid medium. Ultimately, it’s about how simple materials can create complex visual experiences. What does it all mean? Well, that’s for you to decide.